Academic Misconduct in Higher Education Today
David Cordes
Department of Computer Science
University of Alabama
Workshop Overview
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Goal:
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Better understanding of the current situation
Information on relevant resources
Format:
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Interactive
Working groups, not a lecture
March 16th-18th, 2003
Share the Future IV
Tempe, Arizona
Workshop Outline
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Problem awareness [10 min]
Introductions [10 min]
Establish some basic guidelines
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Group Task #1: Best Practices
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Factors that motivate/reduce cheating [30 min]
Group Task #2:
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What is cheating? [15 min]
Academic Honor Codes and cheating [30 min]
Tools to address misconduct
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Plagiarism tools [15 min]
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Awareness and Appreciation
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Interactive Quiz
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Awareness and Appreciation Answers
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
One study showed 75% of
students today admitted to
serious cheating on exams,
compared to 39% in 1963
Cheating percentages: Business
87%, Engineering 74%, Sciences
67%, Humanities 63%
Students tend to cheat more as
they progress through the
curriculum from first-year to
senior
Males used to cheat more,
females catching up
Numerous researchers have
confirmed the Greek link to
cheating
March 16th-18th, 2003
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
One study found that 56% of a
graduating engineering class
admitted to cheating
80% of students have witnessed
an incident of cheating and not
reported it
Students indicate they cheated on
approximately 8.6% of the
homework assignments in a given
semester/term
Students felt their friends cheated
twice as much as they did. 95%
of the students felt their friends
were more likely to cheat
90% of students believe that
cheaters are either not caught or
not appropriately disciplined
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Introductions
Please give:
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Attendees
Name
Institution
Discipline
One result that surprised you
from the quiz
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March 16th-18th, 2003
Jim Morgan, Civil, TAMU, jimmorgan@tamu.edu
Joseph Shaeiwitz, Chemical,
West Virginia,
jashaeiwitz@mail.wvu.edu
Richard Frueler, FEH
Coordinator & Aerospace, Ohio
State, rick.freuler@osu.edu
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Working definition: What is cheating?
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The standard faculty answer to this question is:
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I’ll know it when I see it
Process:
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Think (by yourself) for 30 seconds
Share your results with a partner
Develop a concise definition of cheating
March 16th-18th, 2003
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What is cheating? (definitions)
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Overtly disobeying the rules set forth in an
assignment
Representing someone else’s work as you own
Giving or receiving unauthorized help on an
assignment
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Institutional definitions of cheating
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U.Washington: You are guilty of cheating whenever you
present as your own work something that you did not
do. You are also guilty of cheating if you help someone
else to cheat.
Ohio State: any activity that tends to compromise the
academic integrity of the University, or subvert the
educational process.
West Point Honor Code: A Cadet will not lie, cheat or
steal, nor tolerate those who do.
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Group Task #1
Best Practices for dealing with misconduct
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Goal:
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Identify best instructor practices for reducing or
eliminating cheating from an engineering classroom
Process:
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Background information
Break into groups of three to five people
 Identify best practices
 Identify “worst” practices
Report out (by each group)
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Group Task #1
Best Practices for dealing with misconduct
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Background Information
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Top five scenarios students
felt constituted cheating
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Someone taking an exam for you
Changing an answer on an
already graded exam
Bringing an illegal cheat sheet to
an exam
Looking at another person’s exam
Passing an answer to another
student during an exam
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Process, in your group:
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Identify best practices for
dealing with misconduct
Identify worst practices for
dealing with misconduct
Students would be less
likely to cheat if their
instructor wrote fair exams
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Group Reports:
Best/worst practices to eliminate cheating
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Best: different versions of exams, different ordering of questions
Best: Individual assignments when possible
Best: Discussing issues that arise (w.r.t. cheating) as you go through the
course
Best: Very strict consequences
Best: Have the needed institutional support
Best: Won’t cheat if perceived as valuable information (if students believe
they don’t need to know the material, they approach learning it differently)
Hard to make sure students always handle the transition between group
assignments and individual assignments properly
Worst: permanent seating charts
Worst: offending the students integrity (such as staying in the room at an
institution with a strict, student-enforced academic honesty policy)
Worst: inconsistent grading policies
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Interesting Observations
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Student Opinion #1
On an exam, is it cheating if a
student
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Copies from another student
(97% Yes)
Copies from a cheat sheet
(92% Yes)
Uses formulas or notes on a
calculator or PDA
(72% Yes)
Asks questions of another
student who has already
taken the exam (24% Yes)
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Student Opinion #2
Is it cheating if a student
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Copies another student’s
homework when it is not
permitted (72% Yes)
Submits a copy of an old
assignment from a previous
term (49% Yes)
Submits a copy of an old lab
report from a previous term
(59% Yes)
Copies a passage out of the
text for a homework
assignment (18% Yes)
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Group Task #2
Academic Honor Codes and Misconduct
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Goal:
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Develop the essential components of an academic
misconduct policies that can be utilized within your
institution
Process:
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Background information
Break into groups of three to five people
 Construct your own “academic misconduct code”
Report out (by each group)
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Group Task #2
Academic Honor Codes and Misconduct
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Background Information
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Most critical factor in honor
code success is student
understanding
Honor codes exclusively
managed by students are
more effective
35% of students feel that
honor codes are well
understood at their institution
50% of students believe the
faculty at their institution
enforce academic honor code
policies
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Process
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Break into groups
 Round-robin: does your
institution have an
honor code? Can you
easily explain it to the
group?
 Construct your own
“honor code”
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Group Reports:
Academic Honor Codes
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Things to consider:
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Does not place an unreasonable burden on the
faculty members
Cheating is not a Boolean (yes or no) issue. There
are shades of gray, and “one penalty fits all” does not
work
Instructor must have the flexibility to handle unique
situations
Instructor must have access to relevant information
regarding a student’s past academic record
March 16th-18th, 2003
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Tools to assist in detection
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Over 50% of students admit to plagiarizing
material from the Internet
Tools that help detect mis-conduct
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Textual document plagiarism
 www.turnitin.com (plagiarism.org)
 Costs real money ($500 to $1000 per year)
MOSS (Measures Of Software Similarity)
 Programming languages (C, C++, Java, …)
 Free (Alan Aiken, CS, Berkeley)
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References
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Carpenter, Harding, Montgomery, Steneck, “PACES – A study on academic integrity
among engineering undergraduates (preliminary conclusion),” 2002 ASEE Annual
Conference
Harding, Carpenter, Montgomery, Steneck, “A comparison of the role of academic
dishonesty policies of several colleges on the cheating behavior of engineering and
pre-engineering students,” 32nd ASEE/IEEE FIE Conference
Harding, “Cheating: student attitudes and practical approaches to dealing with it,”
30th ASEE/IEEE FIE Conference
Clough, “Plagiarism in natural and programming languages: an overview of current
tools and technologies”
Morgan, Foster, “Student Cheating: an ethical dilemma,” 1992 FIE Conference
Harding, Carpenter, Montgomery, Steneck, “The current state of research on
academic dishonesty among engineering students,” 31st ASEE/IEEE FIE Conference
Hinman, “Academic Integrity and the World Wide Web,” Computers and Society,
March 2002
Sheard, Dick, Markham, Macdonald, Walsh, “Cheating and Plagiarism: perceptions
and practices of first year IT students”
March 16th-18th, 2003
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